When I first got to Taipei in August, the heat in the city was simply unbearable. I figured a trek up the mountains would be a nice escape and a good opportunity to meet some active people. I found a rather large hiking group on meetup.com that had just a couple spots left on a hike that very weekend, so I signed up immediately.
It was super convenient to get to from downtown, and although clouds blocked any conceivable view at the summit, it cleared up later in the day and I got to experience a rather beautiful part of Taiwan. Not that the misty mountain trek wasn’t also beautiful. We ended our hike at Bayan waterfall and hot springs, which were much welcome after the day-long endeavor. It was a lot of fun to jump from the cool waterfall into the steamy hot springs.
I was unsure of what to expect with the meetup.com hiking group, but I met some really interesting people from all over the world. Most had either relocated to Taipei for work or came here on holiday and loved it so much they never left. In our group of ten, only one person was actually from Taiwan.
We missed our stop on the bus and had to backtrack a bit down the road to get to the trailhead. Did manage to get a nice view from that stroll though.
A lot of the more popular hiking trails in Taiwan have stone steps all the way up. I thought this may have just been a thing at Yangmingshan, but many of the hikes I’ve been on since also have the same. But it does seem to just be on the well traveled trails with many visitors and footsteps a day. It’s still odd to me to go on a day hike and spend hours climbing stairs, as I am so used to trekking through cleared paths in forests in Canada. They are quite pretty and nicely made though.
Ra Ma Rambles 